TABLE OF CONTENTS

OPENING OF THE 21st EUROPA CINEMAS NETWORK CONFERENCE …………………….…………….5

Nico Simon – President, Europa Cinemas…………………………………………………………………………….……….5 Gabriele Bertolli – Policy Officer, Creative Europe MEDIA, European Commission ……………………...5 Harald Trettenbrein – Head of MEDIA Unit, European Commission ………………………………….………...6 Claude-Eric Poiroux – General Director, Europa Cinemas…………………..…………………………………………7

SESSION I – RE-IMAGINING THE CINEMA EXPERIENCE ………………………..……………………………7

Both moderated by Michael Gubbins – Partner, SampoMedia, UK PANEL I – Investing in our Future: Innovation, Diversity, Communities ….………………………..7

• Strategic investments, brand identity and programming choices. • Reshaping cinema spaces, creating places. Building a sustainable and ethical brand. • Raising the profile of films and venues through innovative campaigns. • The importance of local cinemas to communities and social cohesion.

Valerio Carocci – President, Association Piccolo America, Italy…………………………………………………...8 Ramiro Ledo Cordeiro – Exhibitor, Numax/Duplex Cinema, Spain ……………………………………….……..8 Suzanne Bos – Head of Marketing, Focus Arnhem, Netherlands …………………………………..……….…..9 Pedro Borges – Exhibitor/Distributor, Cinema IDEAL/Midas Filmes, Portugal …..……………………… 10

PANEL 2 – Next Generation of Cinema-goers: More than Just Films ……………………………….10

• More than just films: meeting the needs of a hyper-social and always-on generation. • Adapting pricing policies: from subscription schemes and flexible reservations to ticket- sharing apps. • Listening to, collaborating with and learning from teenagers to extend the traditional cinematic experience. • Providing opportunities to make and play with content rather than simply consuming it.

Penny Mills – Consultancy Director, The Audience Agency, UK ……………………………..…………………10 Daniel Sibbers – Head of Marketing, Yorck Kinogruppe, Germany ……………………………………………11 Jaëla Arian – Founder of LA RIOT, Rialto, Netherlands …………….……………………………………………….12 Matthieu Bakolas – Exhibitor, Quai 10, Belgium ………………………………………………………….…………..13

SESSION II – EUROPA CINEMAS ARTHOUSE TALES: PART 1 .………………………………..…………13

Moderated by Maddy Probst – Managing Producer, Watershed, UK / Europa Cinemas Vice- President

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 1 Mats Olsson – Röda Kvarn Borås, Sweden…………………………………………………………………………….….14 Alen Munitic – Kino Mediteran, Croatia …….……………………………………………………………..……….…….14 Sylvie Presa – Studio 43, France …………….………………………………………………………………..……………….15 Monica Naldi – Cinema Beltrade, Italy …………………………………..…………………………..……………..……..15 Cara-Lynn Bauer – 3001Kino, Germany ….……………………………..…………………………..……………..……..16 Octavio Alzola – Cines Renoir, Spain ……………………………………..…………………………..……………..……..16 Susan Wendt – Trustnordisk, Denmark ……………………………..……..……………………..……………..……….16

SESSION III – ADAPTING TO THE SHIFTING CINEMA LANDSCAPE ………………………………..….16

Workshops 1 & 4 moderated by Michael Gubbins – Partner, SampoMedia, UK Workshops 2 & 3 moderated by Irene Musumeci – Film Marketing Manager, Curzon Artificial Eye, UK WORKSHOP 1 – Smart Data & Smart People ……………….…………………………………………………17 • Big Data vs Smart Data: using data to improve the cinema-going experience. • Making the most of data in a standalone independent cinema. • Turning social media followers into active cinema-goers. • Dynamic membership schemes and ticketing deals.

Ben Johnson – CEO, Gruvi, Denmark …………………………..……………………………..……………………………17 Ida Thoren – Exhibitor, Fyrisbiografen, Sweden ………………..…………………………………………..………..18 Bob Van Der Meer & Frank Groot – Exhibitors, Filmhallen, Kino Rotterdam, Netherlands..……..18 Oliver Fegan – CEO, Usheru, Ireland ……………………………….…………….…………………………..….….…….19

WORKSHOP 2 – Digital Marketing Strategies: How do Films and Venues Stand Out and Get Noticed? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….20 • Promoting independent films through collaboration: joint exhibitor/distributor campaigns. • Designing experiences for niche audiences on and offline. • Learning from young activists to build awareness on and offline. • From projectionist to influencer: get your team involved in your social media strategy.

Thierry Delpit – CEO, Cine Society, France …………………….…….…………………………………….……………..20 Irini Siga & Jens Lanestrand – Exhibitors, Biografcentralen, Sweden ……..………………………………….21 Marvin Wiechert – Digital Marketing Manager, Yorck Kinogruppe, Germany .……………….….……..21 Madeleine Probst – Managing Producer, Watershed, UK ………………..………………….…………...………22

WORKSHOP 3 – Making Cinemas More Open, Inclusive and Sustainable …………....…………22 • Reaching out to communities that are not yet engaging with your space. • Creating more inclusive spaces and offers. • Optimising spaces: practical design and architectural ideas. • Going green through small steps.

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 2 Eef De Lombaerde – Audience Officer, Kunstencentrum BUDA, Belgium ……………..…………….…..23 Kristofer Woods – Co-Programmer, Wolf Kino, Germany ………………………………………….…………….24 Jean-Marc Lalo – Architect, Atelier Architecture Lalo, France .………………………………….……….…….24 Rachel Hayward – Head of Film, HOME, UK ………………………………..…………………………………………..25

WORKSHOP 4 – Getting into the Mindset of New Generations …………….……..…….………….26 • More than film: targeting younger audiences with new content and experiences. • From small screens to big screens: developing a taste for films on and offline. • Experiments in converting festival-goers into cinema-goers. • Working towards more dynamic relationships with audiences.

Mathias Fournier – Project Coordinator, Cinéma De Contis, France ……..…………………………….…...26 Stefana Dragan – MUBI Go Coordinator, MUBI, UK ………………………………………………………………….26 Metka Daris – Director, Kinodvor, Slovenia …………….………………………………………………………………..27 Greta Akcijonaite – Coordinator, European Film Challenge, Lithuania ..…………………………………….28

SESSION IV – THE FUTURE OF INDEPENDENT FILM IN THE STREAMING ERA …..……………...28

PANEL 1 – How Can Cinemas and Streaming Platforms Co-exist? …………..………………………28

Moderated by Michael Gubbins (Partner, SampoMedia, UK) • Can films without a theatrical release find their audiences? • Does the existing value chain need to be adapted and what is the place of cinema? • Do film festivals represent a new release and business mode for independent film? • How to guarantee film theatres and audiences access to all films?

Dr. Peter Merrington – Research Associate, University of Glasgow, UK …………………………………….28 Jakub Duszynski – Head of Acquisitions, Gutek Films, Poland ….……………………………….……………...30 Mira Staleva – Exhibitor & Managing Director, Dom Na Kinoto/Sofia International Film Festival, Bulgaria …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….30 Frédéric Corvez – Sales Agent & Distributor, Urban Distribution International, France ..…………..30 Jon Barrenechea – VP Marketing, MUBI, UK ………………………………….…………………………………………30

PANEL 2 – The Essential Value of Cinema in Film Promotion ……….…………..……………………31

Moderated by Michael Gubbins (Partner, SampoMedia, UK) • Engaging audiences in films and film culture: cinemas as curators and trusted brands • Exploring the potential to build more dynamic relationships between producers/sales agents & cinemas • Are there more effective opportunities for cross-promoting films in cinemas and on VOD? • How do cinemas respond to an over-supplied film market?

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 3 Eduardo Escudero – Exhibitor & Distributor, A Contracorriente Films, Spain ..……..…………………..31 Andrea Occhipinti – Distributor & Exhibitor, Lucky Red / Circuito Cinema, Italy ……………………....31 Daniela Elstner – Executive Director, Unifrance, France ……………..…………………………………………….31 Susan Wendt – Managing Director, Trustnordisk, Denmark ……………………………………… …………….31

SESSION V – EUROPA CINEMAS ARTHOUSE TALES: PART 2 ..…………………………………………..31

Hosted by Maddy Probst – Managing Producer, Watershed, UK / Europa Cinemas Vice-President Barbara Tothova – Kino Usmev, Slovakia ………………….………………………………………………………..…….31 Ted Chiaradia – Filmhuis 042, Netherlands…………………………………………………….………………………….32 Joan Parsons – Queen’s Film Theatre, UK ……………….…………………………………………….………………….32 Joanna Piotrowiak – Kino Muza, Poland ……………………………………………………..………………………….32 Juha Elomaki – Arthouse Cinema Niagara, Finland …………………..………….……………………………………32 Katazyrna Siniarska – New Europe Film Sales, Poland .……………………………….…………………………….32

SESSION VI – OPEN SLOT: CASE STUDIES …………………………….………………………………………….33

Hosted by Javier Pachón – Exhibitor, Cineciutat, Spain Agnès Salson – Tours des Cinémas, France …………..………………………………………….……….……………..33 Jure Matičič – Slovenian Art Cinema Association, Slovenia ……………………………………….…….………..33 Carolina Góngora – Cine Paz, Spain …………..……………………………………………………………..…….………..34 Adam Pugh – Tyneside Cinema, UK ………………………………………….…………………………………….………..34 Kinga Plight – Gdynia, Poland ………………………………………..…………………………………………….…………..35 Russ Collins – Arthouse Convergence, US ……………………..………………………………………………………….35

SESSION VII – SUMMARY OF THE CONFERENCE & NEXT STEPS …………………………….……….35

Moderated by Michael Gubbins – Partner, SampoMedia, UK ……………………………..……………………..35 CONCLUSIONS OF THE CONFERENCE & FUTURE PERSPECTIVES ……….…………………………….36

Nico Simon – President of Europa Cinemas………………………………………………..……………….…………….36 Madeleine Probst – Managing Producer, Watershed, UK ………………..………………….…………...………36 Nina Peče Grilc – Europa Cinemas Board ………………………………………………………………..….…………….36 Christian Bräuer – Europa Cinemas Board ……………..……………………………..………………..….…………….36 Claude-Eric Poiroux – General Director of Europa Cinemas……………………………………..….…………….36

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 4 OPENING OF THE 21st EUROPA CINEMAS CONFERENCE Nico Simon – President of Europa Cinemas A great and hearty welcome to all of you to the Europa Cinemas 21st conference. In 1998, we had around 120 members attending and, this time, there are more than 530 participants and partners. This shows the great interest that exhibitors, most specifically dedicated to European films, give this conference. A look back – not in anger but in joy – the Europa Cinemas Network started in 1992. It started in 12 MEDIA countries, 24 cities, 45 cinemas and 110 screens. Twenty-seven years later, these initial members have developed to become a network of 1,232 cinemas and 3,123 screens in 751 cities and 43 countries.

Thank you for your dedication to diversity and your dedication and belief that the circulation of the films we all care for has always and will in the future be best served by theatres made of concrete, filled with numerous seats looking in the direction of a big white, silver or digital screen. We need not adapt our model to the ever evolving situation – more specifically through the development of streaming – but, if we want independent and diverse cinema to continue to be an asset to European culture, if we do not want to see the cinema we love disappear, we need to find attractive ways to keep the cinema screen and modern arthouse screen at the centre of the attention of the audience. Although I believe in a central market, the result will differ from country to country.

Last year, 42 million tickets for European films were sold by the network member cinemas here in this theatre. Many of the films made over 50% of their market share in your cinemas – some even 70-80%. But there is a risk of becoming victims of our success – the network has been growing over the years but, sadly, over the last few years, the granted support did not proportionately evolve. During the last two years, Europa Cinemas received applications to join the network from over 177 cinemas, representing 369 additional screens, of which the vast majority reached the goals of our guidelines.

It is clear and mathematic: we need to be aware that we might reach a point where the support might not be incentive enough for an exhibitor to dedicatedly continue to participate in the programme. The European Commission and the European Parliament are aware of the problem. Thanks to them, a supplementary amount will be made available for 2020. But this is not a sustainable solution and conversations will take place for the future. Our network is pinpointed as successful and efficient. We have reason to believe that Europa Cinemas is not in jeopardy but we mustn’t lower our guards. Your cinemas are the closest possible to the citizens, and that is very important. The next European budget needs to be up to the importance of culture in a European vision for a better world. Now is the time. A new commission is rising.

Gabriele Bertolli – Policy Officer, Creative Europe MEDIA, European Commission I agree with basically everything that you said and, as a man born and raised in Italy, I think the most logical way to start this speech is to talk about my mother. She asks me sometimes, “What do you do in Brussels? What is your job?” and one of the things I use to help her understand what I do, what we do, through Creative Europe MEDIA, is to talk about Europa Cinemas, “We are supporting this network and making European films more accessible for European citizens,” and then she starts to understand. This proximity to

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 5 citizens is the greatest power of the network. The fact that my mother understands it means that the average citizen can and this proximity to focus on the citizen is one of the priorities for the next commission. Next week there will be a vote in the European Parliament to confirm the new European Commission. The next president will be the first female president in the history of the European Union. Although her political guidance on the audiovisual sector is still to be defined, she has already given some political guidance that covers, broadly, all European policies in which we can find elements that are easily applicable to our sector, to the exhibitors and to Creative Europe. I will mention three:

1. Our values, among which, the most important for us is diversity, and cultural diversity, specifically. In this network, we have diversity in three parts: on the screen, behind the screen, and in front of the screen. Forty-two million admissions is incredible, and it is a great asset for our cultural diversity. When it comes to our values there is another that is incredibly important for us and that is European democracy. You have helped us, in particular this year, to make sure European democracy is valued and lived in by European citizens. Over 100 of you have helped us in showing the campaign for the European election, encouraging European voters to come and vote and, for the first time in history, participation in European elections has gone up. You have also helped us with the European Cinema Night. 2. Another issue is to have Europe fit for the digital age. Platforms are becoming very important, artificial intelligence is rising. We welcome the fact that you have carried out a survey on audiences and data this year, presented in Cannes. It was a moment of awareness for us and also for the industry and one of the questions we have is how to turn it into specific actions. We need to put the audience, through data, on the top of our current agenda. 3. European green deal: we want Europe to be the first ever climate neutral continent. This, of course, covers all sorts of policies and areas, it also covers ours. We would like to do more. It’s difficult, but we need to find ways to make sure our environmental impact is less and less.

Negotiations on the future for Creative Europe, 2021-2027, are about to come to an end. In the next weeks or months, we will know exactly what actions and budget we will have for the next programme. What we know now is that there is consensus for having this network as one of the priorities of the programme. It’s a consensus that comes from the European Parliament, the European Commission and the member states, the community. We want to reach out to smaller towns, more rural areas, to find new audiences, young audiences and to focus also on disadvantaged communities. We will need more money; we have no idea yet how much money we will get.

Harald Trettenbrein – Head of MEDIA Unit, European Commission Europa Cinemas is important to us for three reasons. The first is money: it’s never enough money as we understand. Yes, there are many cinemas and we need your lobbying but there are so many areas where you can already intervene. There are areas that the treaty doesn’t allow us to and, in the cultural field, we have only subsidiary powers but, with Europa Cinemas, we can use that to the fullest. What we support is that European films travel. The second reason why the network is so special is because it is the support instrument that is closest to the citizen. It changes quality of life, the quality of cultural life

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 6 for so many people, including Gabriele’s mother. The third reason is a technical one, it’s called a cascading grant: it means that we need the network to reach out to you as cinemas to hand out the money to you. It also means that this meeting is not only important to you but it is also important to us, to see where the discussions are.

Claude-Eric Poiroux – General Director of Europa Cinemas Over the weekend, we will represent around 600 professionals from around 30 countries. Harald has said he has a sleepless night before he has to sign the cheque – it’s true it is a lot of money but it’s also true that we could do with more. It is an important programme for the European Union. It is also one that encourages us to bring people closer to the European Union and our wish is to try to come closer to the citizens.

This year we have once again started the tradition of preview screenings. There are more than 500 people here to see films from 13 countries. Every year we underline the results of our programming. There are over 1,000 of you who have benefited from Innovation Labs.

We publish regular studies on investment in cinema, use of data, and on new approaches to the public. We have a survey that will be published soon regarding initiatives and ethical responsibility, and we have other surveys in your country. Thank you for taking the time to respond. These surveys are published in English, and for the last one there are also translations published in German, French, Italian, Spanish and Polish. We will try to increase the number of translations available on our website.

The independent nature of our work means we can integrate on a local level and be very close to the communities that follow us. This is also a period of great concentration on a global level. This is a weakness because we are dependent on strategies and regimens that we cannot affect. Therefore, it is important that we unite, and with our allies beyond the network; CNC, CICAE, National Art Associations and federations that defend CineClubes. We are defending the quality of the cinema and of the films, because the public trusts us and this profusion and confusion of what is on offer makes the cinema a reference point. Cinemas are a refuge and a place where words can be free and films express a view on the world. I look forward to sharing this optimism with you over the next two days.

SESSION I – THE CINEMA EXPERIENCE IN CHANGING TIMES

PANEL I – Investing in our Future: Innovation, Diversity, Communities Directed by Michael Gubbins – Consultant, SampoMedia, UK

Speakers: Valerio Carocci – President, Association Piccolo America, Italy Ramiro Ledo Cordeiro – Exhibitor, Numax/Duplex Cinema, Spain Suzanne Bos – Head of Marketing, Focus Arnhem, Netherlands Pedro Borges – Exhibitor/Distributor, Cinema IDEAL/Midas Filmes, Portugal

MG: In all countries, including the UK, the days of thinking that the way of recognizing our communities was in putting up shops, has now come to an end. We’ve realized that shopping wasn’t the best thing as a long-term investment and,

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 7 increasingly, we’re beginning to realise, and politicians are beginning to realise, that investing in social spaces and culture makes a great deal more sense.

Valerio Carocci – President, Association Piccolo America, Italy In 2012, with a group of youngsters, we created a cultural association and we are now the exhibitors of a cinema. We consist of people who have always lived in the suburbs, between 2012 and 2014, we fought to save an historic cinema, closed down in the 1950s. They wanted to turn it into a parking lot, so we occupied it for two years; we lived there, we slept there, and we also projected many films. We’ve had Paolo Sorrentino, Nanni Moretti, and famous producers who have come to support us.

In 2014, the cultural heritage minister managed to save this historic cinema and we formed Association Piccolo America. We then collaborated with the government and town hall to form a legal entity to organise outdoor activities. Why? We wanted to rekindle the spark of watching films in an outdoor cinema in Rome. In 2018, we ran an event in one of the most run down neighbourhoods, located in a nature park that is otherwise empty, where there are no other events. For 60 days we screen free retrospective films, to ensure we do not compete with traditional cinemas, because they ask people to pay for films. We collaborate with the municipality and our biggest event brings the likes of Roberto Benigni and other directors to present their films. We had 104 screenings last year, and 120,000 people came We are incredibly active on social media; we have 165,000 Facebook Likes and another 45,000 on our event page. On Instagram we have 55,000 followers and we have 12,000 views on the site. The Guardian and The Times came to see us and wrote about our events.

We contacted Sergio Leone’s daughter to see if she would help us financially to present his films. We held screenings until 5am – for the 2am screenings, the public would wear headphones so as not to disturb the neighbourhood. Many famous directors including Dario Argento came. We’ve created a library and study room that’s open 24/7. Every cinema should have the freedom to programme and to become a real cultural drive.

Ramiro Ledo Cordeiro – Exhibitor, Numax/Duplex Cinema, Spain When we started the Numax project, in 2014, there were five of us and we created a cooperative of social work. We are a non-profit organisation and put profits back into the company. We had people from cinema, distribution, graphics and books, gathering together for a project designed to set up a cinema with a single screen, six months after the cinema had disappeared. It was a very emotional project. When we became part of the network, we had the feeling that we had taken the first step and were now part of something greater.

We didn’t have economic resources. The total cost was a little less than €500,000. We found a credit cooperative and were able to obtain up to €300,000. We had help with an interest free loan of €81,000 and each member put in €8,000. Of those of us who started the project, we are 14 in all, 11 are still associate members of the cooperative. We screen films, do film production and are a distributor of films. We are an independent company. We have a bookshop, work with schools and conduct a number of different activities, as well as the production of films and educational programmes.

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Suzanne Bos – Head of Marketing, Focus Arnhem, Netherlands Arnhem is an average town of approximately 150,000 inhabitants. Focus was founded in 1973 but, in 1978, it moved to a slightly bigger site, surrounded by bars, cafes, etc. In the following 40 years, it expanded from one screening room to multiple screenings a day in three rooms. After many years, we have moved to a new site with five screening rooms, a rooftop cinema, in front of the city’s iconic church (damaged in WWII but now fully restored). Though we are excited about our new building there are obstacles to overcome: we rely on volunteers and had complaints from local residents. A big question for us was, how do you keep your customers and volunteers satisfied and, at the same time, attract a new, younger audience? In order to include important stakeholders and make them love our new theatre, we created a Focus Moves campaign during the year of construction, followed by a month of festivities and a thrilling, huge opening night with more than 1,500 people celebrating with us. We experimented and explored, we fell in love with this part of the city and collaborated with many inspiring local organisations and individuals.

The new building is built on a vision of form, function and sustainability. Openness and transparency in the design reflects our desire to be open and accessible to the people of the city of Arnhem. It gave us a chance to reflect and think about what we can add to a world where the number of screens is going to exceed the population. The answer may be found in physical and programme flexibility: when society moves, Focus moves with it and when Focus moves, it will also move the audience. Our physical flexibility can be seen in one of our screening rooms with retractable seating. This flexible space allows us to programme a wide range of multi-disciplinary activities and, along with that, to achieve a significant broadening of our target groups, such as; films with live music, live performance, a film quiz, a club night with a VJ and opera. We have a permanent open-air cinema on the roof and in the summer, this allows us to attract a large audience even in the hottest months of the year. It became such a success that we screened every day last summer and even had some sold out winter screenings, with gluhwein and hot chocolate. Or rooftop seems to attract a significantly younger audience and it’s perfect to create a community feeling, which is also why social media seems to be the best tool to communicate the flexible and often spontaneous rooftop programme – sometimes we decide in the morning that it’s going to be such a great evening that we’ll screen a film.

We’ve increased screenings, collaborations and invite people to come up with proposals, too. Sometimes we ask our audience or social media followers for programme suggestions. We see our cinemas as spaces to experiment and try new things. We went from 70,000 visitors at our previous location to 111,000 in 2018 and probably to around 150,000 in 2019. Our passholders – the Focus Friends – went from 1,500 to 3,000 in one year, our website has been visited over 60% more than in past years and we have sold over 300% more Focus gift cards compared with years in the old building. Besides that, and even more important, we feel at home in our new place and around us new apartments are being built, the pre- war city plan is being restored and everything seems to fall into place. So far, we have welcomed more people to Arnhem than in our wildest dreams and negative reactions are fading away. For many people, Focus has really become a third place, next to home and work where you love to spend a lot of time. We feel embraced by our own city.

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Pedro Borges – Exhibitor/Distributor, Cinema IDEAL/Midas Filmes, Portugal Five years ago, I reopened a cinema in the centre of Lisbon. It was in a site that first had a cinema in 1904, was redone in 1954 and then, another 60 years later, was done again. It was programming porn films until 2013 and was not a properly historic cinema, but a popular cinema. It was in the historic centre of Lisbon, now the tourist centre. In the past five years, the city has really changed, and it is impossible to live and work in the centre of the city. It was a huge investment, almost €600,000. We completely emptied the space and tried to make it visually enticing.

We have a bar and café, sell DVDs, posters and books, we have newspapers and magazines for free. We try to have 2-3 different films screened every other week, work with festivals, have a 7pm slot for films that often only get shown for a week – Portuguese documentaries, for example where there isn’t an expectation of many viewers. We try to be a space that people who live around us can be proud of, even those working in restaurants and shops, who don’t go to the cinema, but so they can have the feeling they are the only neighbourhood where a cinema exists. We also work with the mayor, have screenings for children and older people, in the mornings. It’s all very simple.

MG: The thing that has come across in all four presentations is that they’re active and positive. We’re not talking about protectionism; we’re talking about building and we’re talking about growth. In all of the cinemas here, we are not talking about fancy suburbs or where one traditionally imagines arthouse cinemas are built. You are building and exhibiting in neighbourhoods that are exactly the demographic arthouses are meant not to get. And yet, there you are creating businesses and cultural spaces that are entirely relevant to those populations. The coalitions are of community support, local councils and partners. The mission is this: to get people to watch films but what you’re saying is that if you make a brilliant environment, people will go there, it becomes somewhere they want to be.

PANEL II – Next Generation of Cinema-goers: More than Just Films

Speakers: Penny Mills – Consultancy Director, The Audience Agency, UK Daniel Sibbers – Head of Marketing, Yorck Kinogruppe, Germany Jaëla Arian – Founder of LA RIOT, Rialto, Netherlands Matthieu Bakolas – Exhibitor, Quai 10, Belgium

Penny Mills – Consultancy Director, The Audience Agency, UK We did a small piece of research, commissioned by the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA), funded by the BFI’s Future Audience Strategy. It’s focused on 16-30-year-olds, a marketplace study, not exhaustive. We used quantitative and qualitative methodologies and the focus was on understanding how we might influence under 30-year-olds with independent film and how BIFA might support the sector.

The good news is that Under 30s love film, it is a valued and popular pastime. They are, in the UK, the largest proportion of filmgoers and the most frequent, about half going to the cinema one or more times a month and half watching films digitally, four or more times a month. The cinema experience is valued; it’s a social event: they are responding to or part

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 10 of the hype and cinema is a crucial part of their engagement. But, as you may have guessed, the majority of that cinema is either mainstream film or they see it in multiplex cinemas. It’s not universal, some shun multiplexes, some shun cinemas, but there is a proportion who dabble between independent and mainstream. A lot of their discovery around film is done digitally – it is portable, and you can see it when and where you want, but they are putting aside time for watching a film. A cinema event or film at home was equally valued and both are social experiences. There was a seamlessness between engaging with film and cinema.

How people got their information: visual information is key. People go onto YouTube, see endless trailers but the call to action comes through people, peers. Millennials, Gen Z, Gen A – whatever we want to call them – live in a complex world but it is their normal. So, we can’t conceive of only one single way to engage them, but film is a draw and has the power to engage. They are looking for authenticity in the stories and the complex world they are living in as well as how we engage with them. They don’t mind experts as long as they are representative and are not telling them what to do but offering up their opinion. They are interested in people not algorithms. We should respect the complexity they live in and get in amongst their complexity – to engage with them not in a partisan way, it’s a dialogue they’re looking for. Critics are more important for the sector than the audience (only 5% listened to critics in the survey). Everyone can be a critic these days and each person will have a different kind of influencer.

The technology is there, the environment is there at home, now, and they have choices in their lives that might mean that taste and development goes on in the home now. Connecting the cinema and digital experience is key because if we’re not doing that and we’re segregating them then we’re not living the same kinds of lives as the people we are trying to engage.

Daniel Sibbers – Head of Marketing, Yorck Kinogruppe, Germany We’ve been struggling with the same issues as other cinemas with attracting young audiences. Over the past few years, we’ve tried a few things and been successful with new spaces, we’ve struggled with new formats and new content. Of course, communication can make a difference but what surprised us is that something very businessy – sometimes seen as bad in our part of the industry – has made a huge difference with young audiences. It has to do with pricing and memberships and it’s our unlimited card scheme. We first developed it for frequent users but really it’s one of our most successful young audience measures.

We dared to develop a brand – before that we were just 12 neighbourhood cinemas – to give us a nice logo and to tell people that if they liked one of our cinemas they should try another. We thought, why not let people experiment and go to other cinemas, and we sold it as a yearly membership for about €230. We looked at similar models in France and we liked the fact that we had some sort of predictable revenue. We started early and successfully but mostly attracted heavy cinema-goers. We changed this model after two years to a monthly card. It costs €18.90 a month but you have to commit to 12 months, so it’s still an annual ticket but, after that, you can leave at any time. With this model, you don’t get the money in advance, but people generally stick around longer than the minimum period.

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We do very basic advertising, telling people what they get. There are no restrictions other than special events. The results, in 2019: • 10% of all admissions come from membership. • The audience attend around 2.9 times per month / 40 tickets a year • The most visited day is Thursday • On hot summer days, it’s up to 20% of admissions • New subscribers get younger the cheaper the price – cinema admissions have become more expensive but, for the membership, the low price point remains • Students and young people make up 1/3 of our subscribers – significantly higher than the average of the market, which is why we’ve decided this is our future

We are encouraged by research from the German Cinema Association, who developed 18 pricing options and research on it shows that the subscription model is by far the most revenue driving system. We are also in an ecosystem we couldn’t imagine 11 years ago. The young generation is completely used to signing up to subscriptions; they all have a streaming service or two; a music streaming service, they might have a newspaper, they have a gym membership and now they have a cinema membership.

We are working on; a new name, we will create an app so they can book tickets directly (but they will only be able to book one ticket at a time to prevent them from storing tickets), we will develop a new website that enables you to buy a subscription while you buy tickets to enable people every step of the way and we’ll add student perks – i.e. additional savings on food and beverages, which is fine because we all know that subscribers don’t consume. We also include film ratings, it’s a playful addition to the programme, and it increases their satisfaction, but, most importantly, it feeds our data pool and helps us to give recommendations to all of our audiences via direct marketing. We have a goal to raise the number of subscribers so that in five years, 25% of our visitors are part of our membership. This scheme doesn’t only give us loyal audiences, it also makes people experiment and the smaller the film is, the higher the rate of subscribers is. These people see movies without a risk.

MG: Some of the habits that people are acquiring through an environment where they’re using lots of on demand platforms are not necessarily bad, and actually the habit of subscribing and experimenting is perhaps one of the possible benefits of an environment where there are on demand attitudes.

DS: It also gives films and distribution a certainty because this is €230 a year, which is about four times the average cinema spend, so we had to argue a lot with distributors at the start. We are paying for these tickets, that’s important to know, but we are not paying a Saturday night premium, but an average weekly price. These people deserve a discount – they are giving something to the market that people aren’t anymore. Only 30% of Germans go to the cinema anymore – this number is down from 50% just ten years ago.

Jaëla Arian – Founder of LA RIOT, Rialto, Netherlands This is a youth film platform for arthouse and world cinema. I am a student and 24-years-old and, when I was 16, I was involved in a film education programme at Rialto and, throughout the project, I realised there was a gap between arthouse film, European film, world cinema 21st Europa Cinemas Conference 12 and my peers. I thought it was a pity that my friends were not aware of these films. When I finished high school, we founded LA RIOT, in 2014. Its aim is to make arthouse films more accessible and better appreciated by young people, 18-25 years old.

LA RIOT is a group of young people that work with Rialto, but it is independent. There is a combination of online and offline platforms; online is a website, where we publish reviews (we have over 350) from our members – they are free to publish their opinions and to share drawings, interviews, anything – and we do the promotion ourselves through social media (Instagram and Facebook); offline, we select films once a month or every two months (we’ve had over 37 screenings in five years) for our audience. We also create a programme around it; an introduction, Q&A, a drink and discussion afterwards – an open environment where you can hang out. The audience also rate the film after watching it, and they usually rate the films really highly. They don’t really know what film they’re going to see, they’re just going to LA RIOT, so they see films they don’t know anything about. The team is interdisciplinary, and they share their passion with their generation. We are all volunteers, Rialto finance the film screening, we do the promotion and everything else voluntary.

• By young people, for young people • Learning opportunity in a professional environment (working with external partners in exhibition and distribution) • Always evolving – keeping our team and members young / fresh mindset • Thinking critically – ensuring we’re always still liking what we’re doing

Matthieu Bakolas – Exhibitor, Quai 10, Belgium Three years ago, we focused on a multimedia project, in a former bank. We do the same thing with video games as we do with films. We’re working with a young public and it’s a long-term task. We work with schools, develop our own animations and organise training courses. Children come with adults, but they have their own card and the pricing is different. We organise 400+ events a year (in addition to regular screenings) because people are looking for something that will bring them together, aside from just watching the film. We have robots, artificial intelligence and there has been a great deal of interest for young children. We’ve also organised breakfasts, one Sunday a month, followed by a special screening. What makes us slightly different is that we have a space for video games, where discovery is a key word. We have teenagers who don’t know what philosophy is but then play a video game built on philosophical ideas and the makers explain the ideas. Young people and adolescents come with other members of their families – parents, grandparents, introducing new generations to games.

We are here to work on quality films, on culture – to improve and disseminate culture – we are working on social links, something of considerable importance for a younger generation.

SESSION II – EUROPA CINEMAS ARTHOUSE TALES: PART 1

Directed by Maddy Probst – Managing Producer, Watershed, UK / Europa Cinemas Vice- President

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Speakers: Mats Olsson – Röda Kvarn Borås, Sweden Alen Munitic – Kino Mediteran, Croatia Sylvie Presa – Studio 43, France Monica Naldi – Cinema Beltrade, Italy Cara-Lynn Bauer – 3001Kino, Germany Octavio Alzola – Cines Renoir, Spain Susan Wendt – Trustnordisk, Denmark

Mats Olsson – Röda Kvarn Borås, Sweden Röda Kvarn is a single screen arthouse cinema run by the municipality, which is an unusual combination in Sweden. Borås has around 100,000 people and is uncomfortably close to Gothenburg, Sweden’s second biggest city. It has a fine cultural life for such a small town and the cinema is in the centre of the city, with 252 seats. The city’s other cinema is a multiplex owned by a national chain of commercial cinemas. It is one of the oldest cinemas in Sweden, opened in 1914, closed in 1983 and temporarily used as a stage theatre. In 1998, it was declared a building of historical importance. In the mid 2000s, restoration took place. Being part of the municipality means we are governed by local politicians. They have taken a firm stance to keep ticket prices down for democratic reasons and setting our goal of screening films of high artistic value. As a municipal cinema, this is not only a possibility but a responsibility. Our programme is based on quality and diversity; based on country of origin, themes and representation. As we all know, the beauty of arthouse film is that they can teach about culture, broaden horizons, provoke, make you think and reflect. I think it’s more important now than ever in this time of polarisation. Initiatives/aims include;

• Film as a priority but engaging with live cinema and other artforms • Throwback Thursdays – screening cult films, which was so popular that Sweden’s chain cinemas launched their own version, called Throwback Tuesdays • Building our brand through social media and marketing • Be personal, we are a small team • Be passionate, gain your audience’s trust • Be different, screen films that are different or just plain weird

Signed pictures from famous people kept arriving at the cinema, addressed either to us or someone called Jerry. We didn’t know why but it was because we have a regular customer called Jerry who started writing to celebrities and it gave us a lot of attention. We still don’t know who the person is, but we have a dedicated wall for the pictures.

Alen Munitic – Kino Mediteran, Croatia Kino Mediteran is a project for the small towns and islands in South Croatia. It is a great joy to travel and screen films in small towns. We are locally famous; if someone sees us on the street or ferry, they will ask if there’s a film screening that night. We started our project with the film festival in Split, as a festival tour. Immediately after our first tour in 2012, we realised there was a huge opportunity in opening all the closed cinemas. We didn’t have time to find finance but went out to build the audience. Once we had the audience, we approached the authorities to apply for cultural funds for digitisation, where we would write applications for free for those cities and, if they could get the equipment, we would run the 21st Europa Cinemas Conference 14 cinema. Another part of this model is that if we ran the cinema, we would work for the whole year, which is important because it is a tourist destination and there’s not much going on in the winter for the local audience. Not one single politician turned down this model. We equipped 13 cinemas, working all year round either daily or weekly. We continue to travel around to cities where there will never be digitisation because they are just too small. We operate in more than 30 cities – 27 of which have less than 5,000 inhabitants. Cinema has really become the only haven for cultural life in all of those smaller cities. Our programme is a combination of independent films and commercial blockbusters, programmes for children and film classics as well as a focus on independent European titles. We’ve marketed it as a programme with soul, and smart and carefully curated programmes. A challenge is to find local workers – young people move away from the islands but from Croatia as well. We also sometimes have issues with distributors because they don’t understand how small the places are where we work. One of our biggest challenges is infrastructure for the future. We have reopened many cinemas, but they are very old and we cannot let them close again.

Sylvie Presa – Studio 43, France Dunkerque is an industrial port with three museums, two concert halls and an art cinema, as well as a special office for films and tele series. We have cinemas with 200 and 230 seats and an increase of 20,000 admissions over seven years. We try to accompany the films, two or three each week, in different ways. We have a monthly publication, a children’s department for ages 2-8 and we have four other cinemas for young people, working with adaptive programming. We have a formula for documentaries, short films, etc where there is a given context, three reasons for seeing the film, calling children’s attention to specific aspect, then we show clips from the films, to explain different things. We’ve had 10 of these so far and are going to start a new series with a monkey. We work with artists and producers and these sessions are run in school hours.

We have a programme where people are asked to transform something into comic strips, which are then taped. We also have a cine-club, this encourages spectators to discuss the films. The group is of 15 people, accompanied by a trainer, who explains how cinemas work and teaches them different tools, to create a public event animated by the group. Finally, we have a film quiz, which tests people’s knowledge, following a screening.

Monica Naldi – Cinema Beltrade, Italy We are good at stealing ideas and we received a lot of presents. Our idea is simple: to offer good movies in a sustainable way. Some people, from those who matter in Milan, told us we were completely crazy; just a small, unknown cinema, far and difficult to reach, not worth visiting. Oddly, some of the same people asked us to become part of their group. Perhaps it would have been easier, but we would have lost our freedom, so we refused. We didn’t want to become so big, but the response of the city was surprising.

Stolen from Moviemento in Berlin, who is now launching a crowdfunder campaign to save their cinema, gave us our idea to use slides instead of trailers for the movies and events, especially when there is little time between the screenings. Other thefts include beer mats from Kino Aero and the loyalty card from Prince Charles in London, and then gifts started to arrive, such as graphic design for free, from people we didn’t know.

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Our cinema does not have luxury furniture, we don’t have a bar, and we are not very good at communicating; lots of words and not many pictures, but there is something people love, maybe in the way we welcome people and share opinions about the movies.

Cara-Lynn Bauer – 3001Kino, Germany The cinema was founded by five friends and it’s not easy to find but it is in one of the most popular areas of Hamburg. Back in the 1980s, the city bought a lot of properties and they were reassigned for cultural purposes, which is how we got this beautiful space. It was formerly owned by Mont Blanc pens. As an old factory building it needed refurbishing. We always try to shine light on films that fall outside of the more successful ones. We focus on political films and the cinema has a political agenda. In 2001, we tried outdoor cinema in a park, and then moved into a stadium. We would pause the film to watch Friday night fireworks. Our most successful programmes focus on genres or countries.

Octavio Alzola – Cines Renoir, Spain When I was young, I saw a lot of American cinema. When I was 14, I saw another type of film, at a venue that’s part of the network. We have five cinemas, four are part of Europa Cinemas (one is a multiplex) and they are being upgraded. In 2018, we had 1.5 million admissions, more than 1.1 million for Europa Cinemas, and these aren’t just people going to see Joker. For a documentary on Almodovar, we had 34% of the admissions in Spain. In 2016, for our 30th anniversary we organised a contest. We are now in the 4th edition of this contest. We distribute books, and have a Renoir club. We work to create a relationship between the schools and the cinema, with workshops and exercises that will promote the cinema throughout the year.

Susan Wendt – Trustnordisk, Denmark Trustnordisk is a global company and a merger of two companies; Trust Film Sales and Nordisk Film Sales. Trust was put on the map with the Dogma movies of 1995 from Zentropa. Nordisk Film was founded in 1906, distributing silent movies – today it is both production and distribution. This made for a combination of commercial and artful films. Some include; Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, Norway’s first real disaster movie, The Wave, made for a tenth of what a big Hollywood movie would cost; A Man Called Øve & The Guilty.

Trustnordisk is also part of Europa International, we have 46 members. Something we do, together with Europa Cinemas, is European sales for a selection of European films that we bring to the US together. In the old days, you were a seller, but that’s not really the case today – today cooperation is the key. We work with producers and distributors, with Europa Cinemas and with Creative Europe. It’s one big circle, which is harder but also better, because we are all part of the whole chain.

SESSION III – ADAPTING TO THE SHIFTING CINEMA LANDSCAPE

WORKSHOP 1 – Smart Data and Smart People Moderated by Michael Gubbins – Partner, SampoMedia, UK

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Speakers: Ben Johnson – CEO, Gruvi, Denmark Ida Thoren – Exhibitor, Fyrisbiografen, Sweden Bob Van Der Meer & Frank Groot – Exhibitors, Filmhallen / Kino Rotterdam, Netherlands Oliver Fegan – CEO, Usheru, Ireland

Ben Johnson – CEO, Gruvi, Denmark We’re a media tech company working with cinemas and gaming. Our focus is primarily on the movement of digital audiences and, primarily, we have a trifecta of issues facing audiences today. Basically, the key thing is that your audience are overwhelmed and there’s too much choice in the market now, we’re facing a paradox of choice. If we look at the cinema experience, we have to change the way we’re doing things to match the behaviour of online audiences more than ever. One key factor identified in our German data is that there is an underinvestment in younger audiences, and a key risk factor is that younger audiences will fall out of habit of going to the cinema.

The good news is there’s something we all can be doing about this. Once people have interacted with point of purchase the advertising kicks in to remind them and there are very few cinemas we’ve come across who are doing this today. Retargeting – very few cinemas have a set up to go back to people who have got halfway through a booking to remind them and, based on our research, I’d say about 20-30% of revenue is left behind just on this one simple thing everyone could be doing. You need to look at how your site works from a ticketing perspective as well as an audience perspective but once it’s set up (with tagging) you will have the information and the benefits of retargeting, going back to the audience and then you can also do prospecting. That is, you have an idea about a group’s behaviour, and you can return to ad platforms and ask them to return to you more of those groups. I often hear that there’s too much information in the data soup, but I can tell you right now that the key point is the transactional data. Once you tie someone’s credit card and purchase to a certain item, you have a very good measure of intent and you can use that information to find other audiences that might be interested in seeing independent film. For retargeting, I’d say we get around one sale for €1.60 spend and for prospecting it’s around €4-€6, but the important thing is that you’re investing in the future of that client. Prospecting is always going to be more expensive but what you’re doing is investing in the life cycle of the new customer.

Over the next five years, we’ll see systems and technology opening up to make this type of audience capture easy. You’re going to see a lot more approaches to cinema that are focused on audiences outside of the work you’re doing with Facebook and your newsletter and if it’s set up in the right way you’ll be able to measure how each dollar you invest gives you a return on ticketing. The E-commerce approach has to leak into cinemas now. As people get trained towards convenience and online, it becomes self-perpetuating, so we have to look at how we treat the online experience, we have to move the box office – selling concessions, etc, into the digital realm as well. The industry is lagging behind in this area and we need to get much smarter at how we’re operating with audiences digitally.

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Ida Thoren – Exhibitor, Fyrisbiografen, Sweden In 2017, we did an audience project and we’re now working with six independent cinemas in Sweden based on this initiative. Fyrisbiografen is the oldest operating cinema screening independent arthouse films in a city of 150,000 inhabitants. We’re a non-profit organisation, mostly run by volunteers.

After a few years of operating, our audience started stagnating and this led us to look at our position and potential. Thanks to funding from the Swedish Film Institute, and an award from Europa Cinemas, we worked with a consulting agency called Cybercom, and they presented a data driven iterative approach that helped us think that every decision we make should be based on data and be iterative until we have a great product and it’s a new way of thinking.

The methods are and seem quite simple: • Talk to our audience, to map thresholds and behaviours of repeat & potential visitors • We did an observation in our cinema, how visitors interact on arrival, with each other and with our volunteers, which gave us a lot of information • We have workshops with volunteers, staff and board members, which led to key improvements, including starting a podcast and removing the glass window from our box office, which improved our engagement and interactivity with visitors • Some insights didn’t need to be tested, we just needed to implement them • Around 66 ideas formed a hyper thesis and then were incorporated into our work • One thing we wanted was for audiences to attend closer to a film’s premiere, but audiences told us that they often didn’t have a chance to see a film so, by advertising 30 days in advance, we created a new way to create awareness for the films. With a follow-up ad, to remind those who saw the first ad, helped our audience find films • We had to improve our website flow from looking at buying a ticket and to improving the visibility and images, which also led to programme changes.

Our goal is not only to increase audience numbers but also to improve the experience for our customers and, through that, change the world.

Bob Van Der Meer & Frank Groot – Exhibitors, Filmhallen / Kino Rotterdam, Netherlands We are going to talk about a collaboration called Cineville, between 40 arthouse cinemas throughout the Netherlands. Cineville is a monthly subscription and we’ve had it in the Netherlands for 10 years. Cineville was founded by five young guys who saw what was the biggest problem at that time, which is the rapidly aging demographic of quality cinema audiences. They started Project David, because in the Netherlands Pathé is Goliath. They united 13 cinemas in Amsterdam, even though they are very competitive, to create a network to make a community of young cinema lovers, to create a subscription model for them and to get them to see films that are more challenging. As a network, we’ve been able to use €1 million of marketing money which, as individual small cinemas would never be able to do. Together, with a very strong brand, appealing to younger and more traditional arthouse audiences, we’ve been able to combine marketing efforts and create a better customer experience.

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You can buy tickets via the app. Cineville has grown from 13 to 40 cinemas and as of this year we expect 1.2 million visits via Cineville and have around 45,000 active film lovers who have a subscription with an average attendance of 2.5 times each month, which is very important as it underpins the financial model. As of now, compared to when we started out, every visit gives €7.25 to the exhibitor and when we started it was only €4.50. Due to the growth with more cinemas, we’ve been able to expand the base, broaden the audience and raise the revenue for exhibitors.

For our own cinema, In 2018, Filmhallen had close to 470,000 visits - 205,000 of those came in with a Cineville subscription which made us focus on Cineville as the future for our cinema and our business. 87% of new members visit 1.5 times more than before. It also gives us a lot of data and we use that in our local cinema for our own marketing. We receive geographic data and our marketing goals are to grow our Cineville subscriber base, which means we have very broad programming, showing big productions to draw in a younger and more diverse audience and then we use Cineville to hook them and then we can target them and broaden their tastes, getting them to go to movies that are more risky to them. We use the data to build personalised movie profiles and we create more targeted email campaigns, personalised movie tips and the click through rates are much higher than in sending a generalised email.

We have data per week per cinema and what we use it for mostly is to target very well our specific audiences. We can now, see retrospectively, for each film, if the audience we targeted are the audience who show up. I would be happy if we had a 100% subscriber rate. Every summer there is a drop off, so the challenge is to get people interested in Cineville again, but the report also shows that there are many people who stay for two years plus. We now have a lower price for audiences under 30, to draw them in young and to keep them because we saw that an older audience has a higher visiting frequency than the younger audience. This means the younger audience are subsidising the cinema habits of the older generations, so it was a motivation to change the pricing schedule to keep it financially sustainable. Nationally, we meet three times a year to strategize as a network.

Oliver Fegan – CEO, Usheru, Ireland What our company started out doing was working on behalf of film studios to prepare campaigns. What we are seeing from a data perspective for European film is that it’s actually very complicated. There are lots of ways that films get tagged and we’re seeing European films, sometimes, have four different titles so they’re not even being classified as the same film. The data from POS players is very different and festivals don’t use any ID so we don’t know where those films are playing and streaming platforms use a variety of different IDs. As the old adage goes: if it’s not measured it’s not managed and we really need to understand, from a European perspective, how these films are performing. We have great supply of European films but the challenge we all face is in generating the demand. We need to generate audience data and we need to build preference data. The more we know, the better we can communicate with people. What technology allow us to do is automate smart communication. It’s all about building early demand. A lot of these things are technical but not that difficult to set up. The key is measuring the impact of the marketing.

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We’ve got funding to build a European film discovery platform. What that means is that we’re going through 42,000 European films and matching the different IDs so we can see where they’re playing in different territories. We are giving this data back to national film bodies so they can understand the footprint of their movies. Our core goal is that once a film is coming, people can find it and say that they want to watch it. With this data, we can say to cinemas that there’s demand. Once the film plays in their city, we can say it’s playing and then track if someone bought a ticket, or alert them to a streaming platform, which means showing demand in territories that we can then say to distributors there is an audience. Our biggest challenge is getting actual showtime data from cinemas. The data sources are not great, so we need to connect directly with box office systems so our systems automatically update.

There is a statistic from the MPAA that 92% of people who say they want to go see a film in a cinema don’t go and see it. There are a lot of people are being lost, especially to independent cinema, because it’s not playing, maybe, in their town, so it’s capturing that data and then for cinemas retargeting people.

WORKSHOP 2 – Digital Marketing Strategies: How do films and venues stand out and get noticed? Moderated by Irene Musumeci (Film Marketing Manager / Exhibition, Curzon Artificial Eye, UK)

Speakers: Thierry Delpit – CEO, Cine Society, France Irini Siga & Jens Lanestrand – Exhibitors, Biografcentralen, Sweden Marvin Wiechert – Digital Marketing Manager, Yorck Kinogruppe, Germany Madeleine Probst - Managing Producer, Watershed Cinema, UK

Thierry Delpit – CEO, Cine Society, France From a French study – the CNC are commissioning a lot of studies – cinema-goers who use social media, 81% are members of Facebook, and almost 90% of younger audience members are on Instagram. In France, more than half the population are using Facebook for information on films, and for Under 30s its 75%. In the UK, it’s even higher – 83% for young audiences. You are also competing with other artforms and digital marketing plans. Distributors in France have doubled their spend on digital marketing in the last 10 years. To have a strong and active online community, we suggest combining organic posting and to work with distributors on the digital strategy – to share metrics with the distributor to help them adapt their strategy and targets and with a possibility to transform communication to engage with ticketing itself, as well as getting the right materials and to sponsor posts on the exhibitor’s pages.

Irini Siga & Jens Lanestrand – Exhibitors, Biografcentralen, Sweden JL: We have around 30 cinemas in our network, we do training and we also work with another 170 other independent cinemas across Sweden with this website: bio.se, an audience website where they can find cinemas close to them and buy tickets. Digital marketing and data use is a challenge for any single exhibitor to gain the knowledge in their

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IS: At our training, we always let students fill in an evaluation form to better ourselves and to see what else they’d like to learn about. Last year, it was unanimous that there was a need for training in digital marketing and social media. We thought about making a series of webinars, but we thought we should make something more lasting. We created a full-size online course, so participants aren’t tied to a specific time. Two months ago, DMC – digital marketing for cinemas online training programme – was released in Sweden for 25 cinemas and over 60 students. More cinemas are joining every week and we are now planning several international releases and we are seeking local partners.

DMC is 100% online and sign-up gives each cinema 12 months access for up to three users per cinema. It includes more than 40 video lessons as well as hands on exercises, check lists and templates. We encourage participants to build a working group at the cinema for discussion and to get more people involved in their marketing strategies. Lots of students watch the videos separately and then get together to discuss them and do the exercises. At the end of the programme they hand in assignments and receive a DMC certificate. You can learn more on our website at: traindmc.com

Marvin Wiechert – Digital Marketing Manager, Yorck Kinogruppe, Germany Our challenge is having 14 cinemas across Berlin, when creating a digital marketing strategy because we have quite different cinemas across the city and across different age groups, etc. Speaking about younger generations, one thing we find helpful, is in separating how they relate to the internet. So, not speaking in terms of what year they were born, but how did the internet come into their life? We make an important distinction between pre and post-internet people, which means there will be a different approach in how to use media and everything information related, and how different things need to happen on different platforms to feel authentic.

We’ve been on Facebook for more than 10 years and it’s still very popular but we have a very generational approach; we use formal, neutral, brandsy language but, for platforms set up for younger generations, we have to use language and posts that are more relevant. You also have to look at how a platform is evolving, for example, in Germany, Twitter is becoming more popular among under 18-year-olds and, with TikTok as well, things are constantly shifting, so what I tell you now might be completely irrelevant in six months.

We have to ask ourselves what questions they have and what do we, as arthouse places, want to put out about the issues they care about. If you want to see how our content looks, you can follow us on Instagram. It is an editorial account, not to shout out screening times. It should remain playful, easy to engage with and lowering the barriers to entry for engaging with our brand.

Principles: • Our Instagram is 100% internet culture with no compromise – it is for a post-internet audience; you have to be okay with not reaching everyone with your memes • We speak in a distinct voice and tone – we have set ourselves goals like speaking in English rather than German to reach a wider international audience

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• We might make stupid jokes one day and then make a more detailed explanation of a film’s importance on another day but we keep a strict eye on maintaining language that feels like its coming from one person even though it’s a brand – we have the idea that if we were a personal account, we would be Kristen Stewart, you might find out about her from Twilight but, as you go, you find out about cool stuff she’s doing • Editorial style – some weeks we might not talk about new releases at all, because we want to make sure we’re talking about things that are relevant to young people, which could be one film for a month, to make sure we really have a conversation

We have now around 7,200 followers, and, for comparison, a large chain in Germany has around 10,000 followers and we’re only in one city so we consider that a success. We keep a young audience under 35 and grow our new generation of moviegoers. We don’t post trailers much and, instead, distributors give us freedom to create something based on posts, like memes for Parasite, or long captioned political posts for BlackKklansman.

Madeleine Probst – Managing Producer, Watershed Cinema, UK Bristol is an increasingly young and diverse city and engaging with them is our priority for social cohesion but also for the future of our business. We want to employ those people in the future, and we want to retain them as an audience. A significant decision Watershed made back in 2015 was a simple ticket offer, £5 for young people, under 25. In consultation with young people, we created a user focused campaign rather than a film by film basis. We could take outdoor advertising and could run it for longer. We were assuming what was a young audience film until we started tracking all our films and we regularly review the films and their audiences. When we know we’ve hit the mark is when we have a film that is about 40% attendance of age 25 and under. It’s not always the obvious films that you think would appeal to a young audience. Rather than try to make young audiences watch European films, our starting point is to think about what young people want from us.

They’re looking for; work experience, social experiences, access to equipment, mentors, a platform for their creative work and a space where they can network and show their own work – a way to navigate the industry. We know these people will also provide us with the answers we need to stay relevant.

With support from the BFI, our cinema leads on UK-wide marketing in the exhibition sector, on behalf of the Film Audience Network, which has over 1,000 members all over the UK. We work on campaigns for big initiatives such as National Lottery Cinema Day, national film seasons and new releases, working on four films each year that are specialised and need extra attention in the form of assets and campaigns. Distributors focus on the opening weekend and we focus on the longer tail. We work with young people in a grassroots way to amplify the releases. We run previews with young people who share through their networks and we commission young people to create social media assets and to create something meaningful to speaks to those communities.

WORKSHOP 3 – Making Cinemas More Open, Inclusive and Sustainable Moderated by Irene Musumeci – Film Marketing Manager, Exhibition, Curzon Artificial Eye, UK

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Speakers: Eef De Lombaerde – Audience Officer, Kunstencentrum BUDA, Belgium Kristofer Woods – Co-Programmer, Wolf Kino, Germany Jean-Marc Lalo – Architect, Atelier Architecture Lalo, France Rachel Hayward – Head of Film, HOME, UK

Eef De Lombaerde – Audience Officer, Kunstencentrum, BUDA, Belgium BUDA is a cinema and an organiser of festivals (dance and performance), and a workspace for artists from all over the world. Our cinema has 54 screenings a week, 365 days of the year, in our three movie theatres. Our audience keeps growing; last year we had over 47,000 people. Courtrick is in the South West of Flanders, with over 76,000 inhabitants, and over 131 nationalities. And it is rich – really rich. But 11,000 people live in poverty, and one in five children live in poverty. Because of this growing wealth gap, we had to take action, especially since our cinema hosts a mostly elite, Caucasian, highly educated audience, which is definitely not a reflection of the place it is in. We firmly believe that everyone should have the chance to participate in cultural activities and therefore we have been working hard to eliminate barriers.

This year, we won the Innovation Prize, for actions we specifically designed for specific target groups, youngsters and socially vulnerable positions. This is not a one-size fits all situation. To eliminate barriers, we work together with a lot of organisations and are trying out new things. The first thing we did was to look at our place and organisation as if we were visiting for the first time: for example, image – how is BUDA perceived in the mind of the individual visitors? We’ll be doing further academic research on this. We have a top down programme, but we try to be more bottom up. Communication is hugely important, what language and what images do we use and how can we improve this to reach every audience we want to reach. Pricing was adjusted to help the disadvantaged.

The second thing we did was to get to know our surroundings. We did online mapping to get to know the organisations around us and then we went out to talk with them, to get to know them. The important thing is that these were not promotional talks, we were getting to know them. We partner up, and work together, looking for meaningful partnerships, whether it’s consultation or collaboration. Every project has different partners, is distributed in its own way, including communication, to reach the right audience in the right way. We had to step outside, which is something we didn’t want to do because you have to drop the technical quality, to go out to poorer areas to coordinate with district teams, to host workshops for children and families. This is a good way to introduce people to BUDA on their own territory, on their own terms.

Finally, we had to be generous. If we drop the price, 40% of costs are covered by the city and 40% are covered by us, so the more successful, the bigger the cost. Eliminating barriers is not a one-day job, it’s constantly evolving and we find new barriers all the time.

The results: not a lot of money but we gained a huge amount of knowledge and human capital. Compared to 2017, we had an increase of 20% of people coming in at social rates and an increase in children coming in at social rates. We’ve also noticed a rise on all fronts, with more children’s and adults’ organisations coming in as well as individuals. We also

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 23 became the most visited organisation within the discount system in the area. To finance this successful initiative, we set up a Social Film Fund. We have three companies and 50 ‘BUDA Lovers’ who generate over €10,000.

Kristofer Woods – Co-Programmer, Wolf Kino, Germany Open since 2017, we moved into what was an abandoned brothel and an area in Berlin that has predominantly Turkish and Arabic populations but an increasingly well-educated international public. We had a crowdfunding campaign and had a series of workshops and events where we got feedback on what the community wanted. It is a two-screen cinema with a café/bar and a studio for workshops, community activities, anti-gentrification events and we support local filmmakers, showing their undistributed films. We also have a production studio. We are good at showing films for a predominantly white, educated international audience. What we are not good at is getting audiences who maybe come from backgrounds where cinema isn’t as important. We had some events but it doesn’t work on a regular basis. One thing we noticed is that opening the doors and saying welcome is not enough. Inviting people to take part is not the same as co-creating and giving people the impetus to feel comfortable expressing their own histories and opinions. This is something we’re trying to initiate working with a local school, over the period of one year, and we want to work to give them the knowledge and security that they can operate in the field that they’ve been historically and economically excluded from. We work with them from the beginning, teaching them to make their own films, working with analogue film and the history of the material itself. We give them space to create their own short film programme. We took them to the Berlinale, which was the first time any of these kids went to the festival – and they were so badly behaved in the screening, but they also completely owned the space. We also made a film with them in VR.

The next step is giving people knowledge, how to book films and how to programme. But most of these kids are never going to work with us because they are not in a position economically to volunteer and that’s something, I don’t know how we can counteract on a local level. I think co-creation also involves paying people for their work.

Jean-Marc Lalo – Architect, Atelier Architecture Lalo, France I started with reopening and rebuilding cinemas, in Kabul, Tangier and Burkina Faso. In order to keep cinemas in the centre of towns, it’s necessary to alternate with traditional commerce. We’ve also worked on cinemas in rural areas, in towns with between 2,000 and 5,000 inhabitants around Paris. There are three elements of working on these projects; the first is the facade of what we want to produce, the second is the public area, and the third is the cinema itself. If we have an old cinema, we are very much attached to them as old buildings but we need to update them adequately if we want to attract a wide public, including young people. In terms of identity, each project is unique and needs to relate to the town.

The public spaces, in general, accounts for about 40% of the total space of the area and should be comfortable. If it is flexible in terms of future use, you can have cafes for discussions or debates. For the theatres, the screen is the most important thing and we try not to have anything less than 10 metres (some are only seven). Depending on the venue and the exhibitor, people ask for a lot of colour to be put in these rooms, to avoid dark,

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 24 black rooms. Access is a very important thing and should be at the forefront of our work. It must be easily accessible for anyone, not just people in wheelchairs. We worked with artists and other experts on the lights, to create mood throughout the buildings. Daylight, getting as much as possible into the buildings is also important. And in the future I’d like to work on recycling, a circular economy is clearly something we can do when working with cinemas.

Rachel Hayward – Head of Film, HOME, UK HOME is an educational charity, a multi-arts centre with five screens, two galleries, two theatres and lots of other activities in one purpose-built building. We have a part-time staff member who co-ordinates our sustainability work. For HOME, it’s really important that it’s an organisation wide responsibility and not just the responsibility of one person. We are driven by the need for a sustainable future and also by the responsibility of creating a pleasant environment for our audiences. The work is on-going and we are always looking for ways of improving.

We’ve been working on environmental policy and practice for at least the last 10 years. Our environmental work is embedded in the work of the organisation. We set markers of achievement into our funding applications. A number of UK funders now request evidence of an environmental and sustainability policy as part of funding applications or reports.

Some of our achievements include; • Having switched to a 100% renewable electricity provider • We have two honeybee colonies on our roof, we sell the honey in our shop & we have beekeepers on staff. Hive inspections are live streamed on the website, engaging online audiences and spreading our biodiversity message as well. • Plastic straws and plastic milk bottles have been replaced. These are small steps but next year we are committed to being single use plastic free • We’ve trained 100% of our staff in carbon literacy – an awareness of climate change and the impacts of our everyday actions, and the training covers how we live, work and behave in response to the current climate crisis – and we’re the first arts organisation in the world to do so. We have members of staff who can deliver training and lead other arts organisations across the UK. • We’ve developed our Sustainability Action Plan (document available online), and each member of staff who has been trained has considered their area of work and looked at how we could individually pledge to be more environmentally friendly in the work that we do. This has resulted in various changes in office and work supplies from ink, packing tape and to staff and guest travel.

It is crucial that all staff are involved in the environmental work so that they can see the impact of their actions and how our decisions impact positively or negatively on our organisational footprint. We have two green working groups that impact on both our business and creative planning, and influencing our suppliers to make greener alternatives. It is really important as a green programmer that our messaging spreads to audience events. This year, we dedicated the whole month of June to spreading our environmental message across Twitter, Facebook and to our film programming – so we now have a green film programme every year. We have a screen next to box office to promote green living and

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 25 with the aim of raising awareness of how our work can be more sustainable but also, hopefully, to positively influence audience choices and behaviours as well.

WORKSHOP 4 – Getting into the Mindset of New Generations Moderated by Michael Gubbins – Partner, SampoMedia, UK

Speakers: Mathias Fournier – Project Coordinator, Cinéma De Contis, France Stefana Dragan – MUBI Go Coordinator, MUBI, UK Metka Daris – Director, Kinodvor, Slovenia Greta Akcijonaite – Coordinator European Film Challenge, Lithuania

Mathias Fournier – Project Coordinator, Cinéma De Contis, France Contis is a small town with one cinema, established in the 1930s and recovered in the 1980s. It has an annual festival and one auditorium. Since 2017, we’ve had VR and we’ve changed the way we’ve shown it over the past three years. From my point of view, VR was an aesthetic shock. I was taken to a world where my senses were completely altered. We started with just two headsets but then we created a bigger space and the real revolution was this year, when we expanded to 20 headsets and tried to make it a collective experience, like going to the cinema. The VR screenings were all sold out – seven sessions, each for 10 people. We had young people and professionals, and, based on that experience, find the technology fascinating, providing culture and aesthetics, but setting the conditions for the public is what we are currently developing.

The link with the youngest generations is a question of attention because, in VR, you are completely immersed, you can’t use your phone and it’s interactive. The challenge, however, is in the works themselves, in creating a catalogue of content. What we want to do is train people from our industry to create a community around this type of content.

Stefana Dragan – MUBI Go Coordinator, MUBI, UK MUBI is a global curated streaming platform and our main market is in the UK. We distribute films theatrically in the UK and the US, and MUBI is also a social network with around nine million members and there is already a community of film lovers we can speak to. MUBI is dedicated to the theatrical experience and we really believe films should be seen on the big screen. We launched MUBI Go last year and it’s an app that subscribers can download. We pick a film every week. We partner with cinemas and distributors and if the partner cinema is showing the film then our subscribers can watch a film for free. We give four cinema tickets a month that to our subscribers for free. We took the curation aspect of our online model and put it offline – the films are not things like Avengers, but more like For Sama. For us, it’s important that these are quality films, it’s all about their cultural significance. Since we launched last year, we’ve chosen 50% European titles, 25% female directed films and 40% foreign language films. We work closely with the distributors to create marketing campaigns to really support the films.

What we know about our audience is that it’s a very young and educated audience. More than 50% of our audience are under 34 and 80% are under 44. We know that each time they use MUBI Go, they don’t necessarily go to the same venue. They are willing to take a risk 21st Europa Cinemas Conference 26 and try a new cinema because we pay for the cinema tickets. On average, users used to go to the cinema nine times a year before MUBI Go, but what we’ve seen is that they now go 17 times, almost doubling their attendance. That’s also seven times higher than the average UK attendance. So far we’ve paid for 40,000 cinema tickets and we’ve supported around 62 films from 30 different UK exhibitors and worked with 150 cinemas, 30 independent cinemas in the UK, from which 22 are Europa Cinemas members.

Metka Daris – Director, Kinodvor, Slovenia Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia, has a population of 280,000 and we have 120,000 visitors a year to put it in context. I’m going to talk about Kinotrip. The concept is very simple: it’s a year-round film programme, by the youth for the youth. It works like this: we have a film club, there is a Kinotrip film festival, there are events and activities all year round and all take place at our cinema. We also have a youth film jury for the city’s international film festival so young people can show they learnt in a professional environment.

There are 16 selected individuals, who apply, and they do all the work. They curate and programme the festival, are in charge of all visual communications, promotion, and set the tone of the programme for the whole year, so it is different every year. They do all of the writing from the programme notes to the tag lines, they prepare all of the film introductions and Q&As and everything that comes with preparing a film programme in a professional organisation. Of course, this is done with our supervision. This has, for four years, been the work of one person who is the link between them and our professional team, film professionals, and other behind-the-scenes workers. One thing that surprised us is that they don’t publish the events on their personal social media – or very rarely. They are also very apprehensive about having their data collected. They wouldn’t participate if they thought we were only doing this to pick their brains. The reality is that you have to let them run.

Why youngsters? Because they are the best ambassadors of our programme, our cinema and our mission. They really can reach demographics that we can’t. They create a special buzz among their generation of peers, and they know that diverse programming and a diverse approach attracts diverse groups. They broaden our network and theirs. After our third year, we had an increase in applications to this programme, and a growing number in individual attendance – not just the Kinotrip demographic. We collect information, stay in touch with them, work with them and for them as our future audience. The lessons are that it’s time consuming, unpredictable, and you have to lose control. Continuity is essential and teenagers don’t want to be treated like children, they want to be treated as adults and to see grown up films with grown up themes. With this programme we try to ensure life-long film-going values and, with our future plans for a miniplex, we see these people as our future staff. Kinotrip is also skills training and development, so it is also a pool of possibility for the people who will be our future cinema operators.

Greta Akcijonaite – Coordinator European Film Challenge, Lithuania European Film Challenge is a programme that was born in Lithuania and has expanded to the Baltic states. It’s been supported for the fourth consecutive year now by the MEDIA programme and expanded to another eight countries in those four years. It started with viral things on social networks, such as the Ice Bucket Challenge. We thought this could be a good tool to use for film promotion, to gamify and reward using the hashtag

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#EuropeanFilmChallenge. The hashtag was created to reach our audience, promote European film and to collect and analyse data as well distributing news, interacting on social media and introducing diverse cinema content. We created an interactive website. You have to sign up, watch any 10 films of your choice (on any platform, so long as they are legal), upload proof of it being watched legally (receipt, selfie, screen, etc), share it with the hashtag on your social network (has to be a public profile) and get points for each film you watch. At the end of the contest, the person who collects the most points receives a prize: an all-inclusive trip to one of the biggest film festivals – Berlinale, Cannes or Venice.

The most fun part is that when people aged 18-40 have the opportunity to go to the festival, there are usually not from the industry and have their first experience of a film festival with other film lovers – we put them in a group together. From a hashtag, which didn’t go viral, we have become a community. It promotes legal ways of viewing content and support films as well as discovering new platforms, venues or ways for audiences to engage. We are also launching film events and a podcast and are segmenting our audience to focus on female millennials, LGBT+ and cinephiles. Last year we had over 20,000 people registered, and a large number of European films are watched - 2,900. About 8% of registered people complete the challenge and we can also see audience behaviour, like how and where they choose to watch films.

SESSION IV – THE FUTURE OF INDEPENDENT FILM IN THE STREAMING ERA

PANEL I: How Can Cinemas and Streaming Platforms Co-exist? Moderated by Michael Gubbins – Partner, SampoMedia, UK

Speakers: Dr. Peter Merrington – Research Associate, University of Glasgow, UK Jakub Duszynski – Head of Acquisitions, Gutek Films, Poland Mira Staleva – Exhibitor & Managing Director, Dom Na Kinoto/Sofia International Film Festival, Bulgaria Frédéric Corvez – Sales Agent & Distributor, Urban Distribution International, France Jon Barrenechea – VP Marketing, MUBI, UK

Dr. Peter Merrington, Research Associate, University of Glasgow, UK We’re working to understand audiences from every possible way that they’re engaged with film and the way people understand how their own film taste is evolving over time. In the UK, film provision and engagement is skewed towards the South of England. For the past two years, we’ve been involved in doing a longitudinal survey with 200 people across those areas, as well as focus groups, policy research and background literature research. The project is an open access, publicly funded project, so it will be available for anyone interested to look at on our website.

With the nature of film consumption changing very, very quickly, the nature of this research is that in six months it would probably look very, very different. In the last year, for example, the number of households that subscribe to Netflix has gone up 26%, and now almost half of households in the UK are subscribing to some form of online platform. 21st Europa Cinemas Conference 28

Habits + findings: • About ¼ of people’s online viewing time is spent watching films • An Ofcom study shows that about ½ people in the UK don’t consider themselves able to spend any more time watching things online • The largest platform for film consumption in the UK is still broadcast television – 3.7 billion films viewed in 2017, way above cinema and online viewing figures combined • Cinema engagement in the UK is likely to be from those of a higher socio- demographic background • Almost 90% of people are watching films on television • About 1/3 of people are going to multiplexes at least once a year • About 1/3 of people are still watching films on DVD • Streaming is about 2/3 of people • For boutique chains – about 20% are watching in a mobile environment and around 16% are engaging with independent and arthouse cinemas

If we take the 16% and look at how they watch across all types of media and platforms, we see that they watch across all the same platforms as everyone else, they just do it more. Almost all of them watch television, DVD and stream and they do this more than everyone else. The takeaway from all of this is that streaming and online platforms are brilliant because they provide convenience, choice and affordability but the choice can then be overwhelming so that navigating it creates questions and opportunities. There’s a contrast between convenience and affordability and the cost of the experience. Experience of quality, environment and the social experience of cinema is valued.

A fundamental part of film watching is social engagement so while there is a small percentage of audiences who will go to the cinema by themselves, in most cases, it’s about going with friends and family and the cinema becomes a part of maintaining those relationships in your everyday life. Those relationships are negotiated through film taste and experience. Cinemas also play a role in wellbeing – being part of a community and as an educational space, connecting them with a wider film culture (Q&As, festivals and meeting others with shared interests). The cinema is also seen as a space of attention and focus.

JB: As a former exhibitor myself, we can see streaming platforms now as using cinemas as a way to launch their own content. Now, we don’t see the relationship in such functional terms, for us it’s a partnership and we think the two things are complementary. The theatrical experience elevates content which is good for the afterlife of that film. From a purely value chain perspective, cinemas add so much. Our entire business model is mirroring the theatrical experience, it’s time limited and one of the advantages of our model is that it compresses time and you don’t spend two hours browsing (which mirrors our social media experiences), giving the artform the time and attention it needs. MUBI Go is our practical way of working with cinemas.

JD: I loved the way distribution used to be 20-30 years ago: us deciding if we were seduced by the film and picking it up for the local market. I could run with this for the next 30 years, at least. But, suddenly, there was a massive change and we are now talking only about the appearance and impact of streamers on our business but, what I noticed, is that it happened 21st Europa Cinemas Conference 29 before with piracy. You think maybe cinemas are done but, of course, I was wrong, and we are still around and we’re doing very well. Then someone suggested we should engage with alternative content and, now, what frustrates me is the complete lack of data. The question now is, does it make sense to sacrifice the theatrical window?

MG: There is always a point where it looks like we are on a slippery slope but, in France there is something that works, and the on-demand platforms seem to be coming in and disrupting it.

FC: We are discussing issues for which we don’t have solutions. It’s not just cinema versus platforms, it’s also films versus series, independent companies versus big US companies. My concern is that there is no European platform - except of course, for MUBI, who does a wonderful job and, for me, is just like a cinema online. There is no transparency with Netflix, so we don’t know how films like Roma did – these films are promoting Netflix, but Netflix is not promoting films.

JB: Every film we approach differently; we’ve done Day and Date, 2-week, 4-week, 16-week windows, with different results depending on the film, and we’re gathering that data. They are the types of films we are all here to look after. Are we here to protect our culture and how do we pragmatically get the films to as many people as possible? That should be the only conversation.

MS: The small markets are definitely not part of the picture you’re talking about. Bulgaria is a small country, but there are many other small countries, small markets, which are also not granted the rights to show it [Roma]. As Peter said with his research, and as other research shows, it develops audiences. Television, VHS, DVD, streaming does not threaten the theatrical experience. Cinema is still a place where people can get together. After that, it just depends on us and our creativity and, after yesterday’s presentations, I’m optimistic. Maybe in 20 years it will be different, but today these platforms are only helping develop film culture. These platforms also provide an opportunity for audiences who can’t see all the films at a festival can see them online. It develops the hunger, the appetite.

PANEL II: The Essential Value of Cinema in Film Promotion

Speakers: Eduardo Escudero – Exhibitor & Distributor, A Contracorriente Films, Spain Andrea Occhipinti – Distributor & Exhibitor, Lucky Red/Circuito Cinema, Italy Daniela Elstner – Executive Director, Unifrance, France Susan Wendt – Managing Director, Trustnordisk, Denmark

DE: There’s something I’ve been hearing over these two days and it’s that curating is going to get the public. You know them and you know how to target them. You are going to get the public of tomorrow. We are so lucky in Europe to be supported by Creative Europe, but, as exhibitors, you also have to be very reactive. We have to be more flexible, and quick in changing our model to support a release or in taking a risk. It is about exchange, but we also have to be involved in the whole process to support what you’re doing.

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AO: We have to recognise that things are getting more complicated than before and so there’s not just one answer. The first five movies make the majority of the box office and so there is less visibility for a lot of films. What we have to do in terms of promotion is very important – there are too many films and there’s not enough space for them all to be in the theatres – so what we have to do as sales agents, distributors, and producers is give money to promote the films. We use a lot of influencers, who have a community that will be good for the film we’re promoting, and we get in touch with them and it’s working – they become ambassadors to reach people on social media. Engage the distributor in your process, with data.

EE: As a distributor, the first thing we do as a curator is to decide or think about the theatricality of a film and, most of the time, good distributors have success with this. Some films need to be released in an eventised manner.

SW: It’s cooperation between every single corner of this industry, starting with the different producers, financing platforms, distributors and exhibitors – everyone needs to talk and work together, it’s all one big circle. We can’t forget, it’s not only about the curation in the cinemas now, but also about the education of the younger audience. Every film – and every territory – is different and needs a special way of being taken care of. For every individual film there is a different plan.

SESSION V – EUROPA CINEMAS ARTHOUSE TALES: PART 2

Moderated by Madeleine Probst – Managing Producer, Watershed, UK / Europa Cinemas Vice-President

Speakers: Barbara Tothova – Kino Usmev, Slovakia Ted Chiaradia – Filmhuis 042, Netherlands Joan Parsons – Queen’s Film Theatre, UK Joanna Piotrowiak – Kino Muzna, Poland Juha Elomaki – Arthouse Cinema Niagara, Finland Katazyrna Siniarska – New Europe Film Sales, Poland

Barbara Tothova – Kino Usmev, Slovakia Kino Usmev is almost 100 years old and, since 1922, has been almost continuously screening films. It’s well established in the city and, when it closed in 2012, there were only two multiplexes in the city. Two friends and I lobbied to take on the cinema and turn it into an arthouse. It took us three years and, in 2015, the city gave us the keys and we had to make it happen. We had support from the community and architects. We have an average of 33 screenings a week, with events, and we also have a bar and outdoor screening events. Our programme has ordinary and extraordinary stuff; artists’ talks sell out, film marathons are very successful, we organise baby, elderly, autism and dementia friendly screenings. We are starting an inclusive film school to work with minorities, and we work with other

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 31 organisations and experiment. We added a second screen, had a very successful crowdfunding campaign to make it a luxury space, which increased our attendance by 30%.

Ted Chiaradia – Filmhuis 042, Netherlands In the 1970s, it was a very important business for counterculture. We show almost first features and a lot of retrospectives. Share your passion and people will come.

Joan Parsons – Queen’s Film Theatre, UK QFT is hidden – in a house surrounded by other houses. It was started in 1968 by the University to provide an alternative to the then booming cinema landscape. The first film we screened was Louis Malle’s Viva Maria and, 20 years later, opened a second screen with his film, Au Revoir Les Enfants. We closed for seven weeks in 2018 and our major change when we re-opened was moving to a holdover system. 2018 was also our 50th anniversary with a mix of archive and special events, including a presentation of our printed programme archive. It’s now fully digitised and searchable online. The exhibition has toured across Northern Ireland, accompanied by a film programme of some of our most successful films, introduced by an historian. We created a publication, which we distributed free to schools and libraries and it has a much more detailed history of the cinema. We’ve just rebranded and we’ll be featuring a new member of the QFT family (including customers) every week.

Joanna Piotrowiak – Kino Muzna, Poland Kino Muzna has 50% of its support from the city and was opened in 1908. For our 110th anniversary, we mixed classic and popular titles. We held our anniversary screenings in other locations as we were working to refurbish our cinema at the time. We’ve built a terrace where we hold open-air screenings with headphones, so as not to disturb our neighbours. We run children’s workshops and sometimes show films on 35mm. We’ve received many awards and been featured in a range of media from a national railway guide to fashion shoots.

Juha Elomaki – Arthouse Cinema Niagara, Finland We have 450,000 inhabitants in Tampere, which is enough to operate a cinema, though most of the country has a population density issue. We started in 1968, the same year as the Tampere Film Festival. We are an association, run by an independent board. The film centre is funded from the city of Tampere and its educational work, but the cinema gets its finance from its box office and through Europa Cinemas, which we have been a member of since the beginning. We work with school children, deal with social problems and help immigrants, host film festivals to special events and discussions, and work with the university. We are the only arthouse cinema in Tampere and the biggest one in Finland. There are almost 900,000 cinema admissions a year in Tampere and we screen all our films in their original versions with subtitles. We no longer use print media, we use direct email, social media and our website. Our pricing is reasonable and Aki Kaurismäki has been an active member of our film club. We distribute his and other Finnish films.

Katazyrna Siniarska – New Europe Film Sales, Poland Over the last few years, most of our films are Scandinavian. We work with no more than 8 arthouse films per year, and we still do short films, which was our start. We mostly work

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 32 with first- or second-time filmmakers, festival winning films, director driven. In 2015, things changed for us with the Icelandic film Rams. We sell films to over 30 territories.

SESSION VI – EUROPA CINEMAS CASE STUDIES (OPEN SLOT) Moderated by Javier Pachón – Exhibitor, Cineciutat, Spain

Speakers: Agnès Salson – Tours des Cinémas, France Jure Matčič – Slovenian Art Cinema Association, Slovenia Carolina Góngora – Cine Paz, Spain Adam Pugh – Tyneside Cinema, UK Kinga Plight – Gdynia, Poland Russ Collins – Arthouse Convergence, US

Agnès Salson – Tours des Cinémas, France I’m here to introduce the book, Cinema Makers, written with my partner, filmmaker and producer Mikael Arnal. We met 10 years ago, and our dream was to create our own cinema; somewhere to see films, but also to produce them and to have a drink together, somewhere you could feel as if anything is possible. We went to see other cinemas, starting with touring France in 2014. We created tourdescinemas.com, visited over 100 cinemas in France to draw inspiration and we decided to expand our visits to another 100 or so cinemas in other countries. There were places where people could see films, meet, and create new things. After the adventure, we decided to publish this book, Cinema Makers, focusing on 10 of the cinemas we visited. Europa Cinemas has also funded translating this book into English.

Jure Matičič – Slovenian Art Cinema Association, Slovenia The network works closely with national film institutions and the Slovenian Film Centre, the Ministry of Culture and, most importantly, the local communities that are still vital to our cinemas when it comes to financing and investing. Our focus is on programming, improving how cinemas operate, their infrastructure and their equipment, and connecting cinemas in the network. We deeply believe that cinema is not just entertainment, but culture, and we try to reflect this in how we approach our audience. Our networks meet a couple of times a year at festivals or events, and we have training programmes. It is important to establish a dialogue between individual cinemas but also between the cinemas and producers, and communities and local decision makers. Working with young audiences was very important for us, and the principles of a film education programme grew from experience and know- how from cinemas in the network. The first initiative was the film education programme, where we educated five education workers and gave 16,000 school children the opportunity to see and debate a film. This paved the way for our next project, which was the Film Elementary School, putting films into education for the first time. We are shaping the national film education policy, getting children to experience film as an artform. We started collecting data in 2011 and our network had around 260,000 spectators (in 2008, admissions were going down but the network’s reach is going up). We have an 18-20% market share in the country, ¼ of that is young audiences and ¾ is for arthouse films. We are trying to expand the network, are a major force in open-air cinema in the country – almost every member in our association has an open-air cinema – and we work with local

21st Europa Cinemas Conference 33 communities to finance and open cinemas. As a network, we are currently voluntary and a major thing we are trying to develop is a national VOD platform.

Carolina Góngora – Cine Paz, Spain My family has worked for 40 years at Cine Paz. The majority of our audience is over 60 years of age. Our marketing plan has been established on four major principles: • Making Cine Paz more visible • Adapting to institutions and creating alliances • Attracting new audiences • Increasing sales

What makes us different from other cinemas and theatres in Madrid and Spain: • Our experience – we started in 1943, the fourth cinema of 25 to open in Madrid • We are managed as a family business • We screen dubbed films (75% of our film screenings are European) • We have a dedicated customer base, who come without knowing what they will see

We have increased our box office by 20% since 2014, hold alternative events, work closely with the Royal Opera House, and focus on people not machines. We continue to innovate, have remodeled our venue, and our marketing tools are simple but successful. We focus on cultural and educational institutions.

Adam Pugh – Tyneside Cinema, UK Projections is the artist’s programme at Tyneside Cinema. The cinema has a history of setting up arts programmes but, until very recently, they did so via a gallery space. It was just before I joined that the cinema decided not to use the gallery anymore, but the exciting prospect for me was in bringing artists’ work back into a cinema and for cinema audiences to be encountering artists as an essential part of the programme including at screenings and live events. New commissions are at the heart of the programme, as well as artist residencies, forums and other things that bring people together – audiences, artists and stakeholders.

The commissions are short films made by artists for cinemas. It doesn’t sound at all radical but it is in some ways quietly subversive. They’re used to making work for a gallery where people might see the work or they might walk past it but asking them to make something for a dedicated space, to be screened before a feature is an exciting proposition. It’s about audience and artist development. We launched the season with four short films, made them free to screen, delivered them on DCP and backed them up with publicity materials – we commissioned writing by leading critics that is available online and as a booklet. We’d like to scale up this model to create a network of four or five partners who each commission films and circulate them within their own countries, and they’d all go around Europe. We’re looking for a range of spaces from cinemas, archives, festivals and film schools. It’s about working with different people across different borders and it’s about audience development.

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Kinga Plight – Gdynia, Poland Gdynia Film Centre is a three-screen cinema with an art gallery, bookstore, restaurant and café. It is also the residence of the Polish festival and film school. We organize dubbing and stop motion animation workshops for children and sensory cinema for children with autism. We also hold a series of screenings with discussions for young audiences. Thanks to Gdynia Film School (operating since 2010), we have access to professional equipment and studios. We organize workshops for primary and secondary school students on the history of cinema and film forms to develop skills and understanding. We also organize workshops for young film critics thanks to a partnership with the National Film Institute and the Film School. Twice this year, we invited children aged between nine and twelve for a week-long summer or winter cinema holiday. They spend time with us between 9am and 6pm, including meals. Each day includes a film screening, followed by classes from photography to acting and dubbing workshops.

Russ Collins – Arthouse Convergence, US The Arthouse Convergence started in 2008, with a gathering at the Sundance Film Festival. We have grown to about the same size as Europa Cinemas. We are not supported by government funding. We have an online forum called the Arthouse Convergence Google Group. Any of you can sign up to it, there are about 1,800 members currently, including some festivals but mostly arthouse cinemas. We all fight against the Hollywood monster, so we share your anxiety and frustration and anger at the nature of the film market. The mission is simple: to increase the quantity and quality of arthouse cinema in North America (mostly the US, but with some members in Canada and Mexico). We want our members to focus on what they can do in their communities. We want to fortify and diversify cinema, encouraging more arthouses to establish themselves and to build a stronger arthouse community. We know we are strong if we have a clear vision and work together.

SUMMARY OF THE CONFERENCE AND NEXT STEPS

Michael Gubbins – Partner, SampoMedia, UK Top 13 workshop takeaways: • Data plus instincts and context is better than just instinct alone • We need to see data in human terms • Experimentation with films & venues is more likely to take place for subscribers • People will look at VOD as a way of staying in touch with great films • Audience engagement is not just about buying a ticket or a one-off event • Initiatives need to be turned into everyday culture • You must be authentic, trust, lose control and work with young people • The user experience / customer journey has got to be simple and credible • It’s not about things that happen to us, it’s things we can change and influence • This isn’t our artform, we are stewards of an artform that’s been around a long time • Cinema is a social space in real, living communities and you have to ensure you are connected to the full diversity of those local communities • It’s not “this belongs to us”, it’s “this belongs to you” • Empowerment, partnership and collaboration

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CONCLUSIONS OF THE CONFERENCE AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

Nico Simon – President of Europa Cinemas The arthouse sector is finally embracing the changing environment and shaping the future.

Madeleine Probst – Vice-President of Europa Cinemas What the last few days has demonstrated is that the demand for a diversity of European films and the diversity of films that we are showing is there. From the many stories we heard, the added values that cinemas create in their communities is extraordinary. The work that we do is exceptional, but we need to remind local and private investors as well as the European Commission, if we are going to continue to create bespoke, authentic events with an immersive approach then we need the investment. What we all share is passion and determination. Finally, a special mention to all the women in the room who don’t always get the thanks or opportunities they deserve. I call on all the women in this room to support other women in leadership roles and to create better opportunities for them.

Nina Peče Grilc – Europa Cinemas Board The panels and presentations have shown that the cinemas and the people are very inspirational. It is also the spirit of the audiences coming to our cinemas and of cinema itself. The filmmakers are, will be and should be really proud of what we are doing with audience development. The audience are growing not just in terms of numbers but also in terms of taste. I would like to encourage you, leaving this conference, to collaborate.

Christian Bräuer – Europa Cinemas Board We must be integrative, and we must be diverse – that’s what cinema is, that’s our work and these places must be there for the people. It’s about having cities with cultural places. We’ve had very good examples of and how to create a super space and do great marketing, but we must also think about revenue structures, which is a great challenge. Another challenge is about the quality of European movies. The changing market sees more movies being produced and a lot of them are not visible so it must also be our mission to see what we can do, we need holistic cinema and partnerships with filmmakers, producers and distributors.

Claude-Eric Poiroux – General Director of Europa Cinemas Someone said, “If we are brilliant in what we do, then people will choose us.” We only shine because we believe in it. Europa Cinemas, altogether in this network, feels the need to share our knowledge and our practices. We do the work but have been supported from the outset by the European Commission and we are very happy to have them backing us still.

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